Two Day Magazine

Caesar Publius Aelius Traianus Hadrianus, numbered by historians as one of the “Five Good Emperors”3, succeeded the Emperor Trajan, in spite of the fact that they sometimes competed for the same pretty young men around the Imperial court. Hadrian married an heiress, but spent more of his days in the company of his mother-in-law and the fashionably jaded dames of society. He was well-read, even by aristocratic standards, although born far from the seat of Empire in provincial Spain. He was fascinated by architecture, philosophy, astronomy, perhaps a little obsessed with ancient history. Not unlike myself. 

He was also an utter geek for all things Greek: Greek architecture, little Grecian urns painted with little satyrs and Greek boys, statues of Greek boys, poems about Greek boys. And also, Greek boys. He was constantly circumnavigating his dominions, fortifying, but not expanding, the already immense Empire, strengthening the outer provinces (“Hadrian’s Wall”, in Britain, marked the limit of Rome’s reach), and initiating a one-man renaissance of neo-Greek architecture. I think we would recognize this man-about-town clearly as batting for the other team, even today; this ostensibly married, well-groomed sophisticate (whose wife is, oddly, always elsewhere); the tanned skin, the penchant for interior design, gadding about resort towns like Will and Grace with his mother-in-law on his arm.

And, if there was a hint of insecurity about the somewhat introspective and bookish Hadrian, it was due to his less-than-pure-blue blood, and his provincial Spanish accent. But what did it matter? He could quote the Greek classics better than most Greeks, and if to be Greek was not the height of fashion, Hadrian was about to make it so.

Enriching rather than expanding the Empire brought prosperity for rich and poor alike, and made Hadrian loved everywhere he took his enormous touring entourage of builders and bodyguards, councilors and concubines; a mobile imperial court. On these travels, he met Antinous, the love of his life, in a Grecian province now part of Turkey, and from that day forth, all the firm marble columns and throbbing aqueducts Hadrian erected were, to some degree, an act in devotion and admiration of his beloved.

The imperial procession then turned the prows of their yachts towards the Nile delta. Rich Romans were drawn in droves to the ancient and mysterious land of Egypt, its sultry climate as intoxicating as its reputation for sensual pleasure, its oriental delicacies spiced with the tantalizing hint of forbidden and vaguely dangerous magic, like a trip to New Orleans, today. Curious about all things, natural and supernatural, Hadrian hired Egyptian astrologers and sorcerers who catered to the aristocratic Roman tourists. It seemed, however, that the emperor was severely punished by the ancient Gods of the Nile for prying into their mysteries.